


cub hunting

by ishallbequeen



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: Blood, M/M, Multi, Rape, Underage Rape/Non-con, Urine, Violence, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-20 02:47:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7387438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishallbequeen/pseuds/ishallbequeen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Csevet lied to Maia about what happened at Eshoravee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cub hunting

"Will you tell us," Maia Drazhar said gently, "why you fear Dach'osmer Tethimar?"

One did not deny one's Emperor. But neither could Csevet Aisava bear to pour out the truth, like a blood stain, onto the curious innocence of his master's heart.

Still, a clearer warning needed to be uttered about the Tethimada. In the wake of Sheveän Drazharan's actions, others might be encouraged to similar efforts. A cold sickness gripped Csevet, but he knew he must speak at last, and saw the line he must walk. "Serenity," he said, trying one last time to avert this course. "It is not a pleasant story."

Pale imperial eyes studied him with that serious, attentive softness which could not fail to arrest the soul. "We do not ask for the sake of amusement."

"No, Serenity, we know that." Csevet's breath wavered. So. This would happen, and he would tell the Emperor enough, but not everything - He began before his courage failed. 

The beginning, at least, made simple telling: that long ride, that long climb, in the rain, in the dark. "It is safe to say," he added, striving to control voice and emotions, "we hated Eshoravee long before we reached its gates." _But we did not yet fear it._ One ear twitched with remembered agony.

Here in the warmth of the Alcethmeret, in the warmth of his master's gaze, that night ten years ago was further away than it had ever been, and it seemed a violation to pollute the present, more promising than ever he had dreamed of, with the foulness of the past. He tried to keep his ears steady, forcing his voice onwards. Still the story ran true, but he hoped the Emperor did not notice the tiny hitches to his voice, as he tried to find the point to deviate, like walking on ice and searching for the weak spot.

"You _bit_ Dach'osmer Tethimar." There was a quaver in his Serenity's voice, a twitch to his ears. A little suppressed laughter and shock, Csevet thought. He looked his age for once.

"It is very likely he still has the scar," said Csevet. But the idea gave no satisfaction, the memory no incentive to linger upon it.

Curtly he recounted the proposition, the rejection, the initiation of the game, softening its aspect with brief description – _Season lies carefully with truth,_ > his first mentor in the service had told him, and oh, how he had become adept. He passed as lightly as he could over the scene, and found, at last, his point of divergence. _Here is a staircase, Serenity, sent by a goddess, for we know you love your goddesses. Here is a chimney, warm as a mother's embrace. Here is an escape, wonderful as any that a hero achieved in a wondertale …_

*

... The blow smashed Csevet, still small for his fifteen years, back against the door, and his vision vanished with his hopes. An arm, soft with silken sleeve, slammed across his neck.

"We caught thee, little fox. Now, what's our prize?"

There was no air for him to answer. His captor laughed against one ear, hot and damp. Like the breath of a monster from a story. Csevet's insides roiled liquid with terror: his eyesight, traitorously, cleared. A face hung above him – the Tethimada heir, of course, men gathered in his wake, laughing ... Handsome, so handsome, but the charming smile belonged to a different face than the dilated, savage eyes. 

"Dach'osmer," he wheezed, preparing – to offer? to plead? - and the lord spun him around and smashed him face-first into the door, so his words were muffled in teeth and lips.

"Now, what do hounds do with a fox cub, my friends?" There was pantomime-confusion in the lord's voice. "Do they rip off its head?" Once more Csevet's head slammed into the wood, and pain poured hotly from his nose while the baying of the human hounds rose to fever-pitch. _Salezheio, Salezheio,_ he prayed incoherently.

"Do they rip off its tail?" The lord's body pressed in, taller, bigger, stronger, and his hand shoved down between shirt and breeches to Csevet's backside. Three hard fingers penetrated without a moment's pause, and if Csevet's face had not been pressed so hard to the door he would have screamed. He bucked violently on those fingers. But there was nowhere to go. 

“And what about these – pretty – little – ears … ” Lips locked onto one tip, sucking with a lover's softness for a breath before the teeth came into play and ripped one earring free of flesh. Again Csevet bucked, desperate as a colt, trying to shatter the nightmare, but against his front there was the unyielding cold oak of a door, and against his back was the even more unyielding heat of a lord of the realm.

“Why so frantic, cub?” Licking kisses were laid against the fresh dripping blood. “Not used to being prey? It's simple. Roll over, show us thy belly, open wide.”

On those words he was spun around. That face, terrifying and lovely as a snowstorm, looked down at him. “Pretty baby fox,” it said softly, and kissed his bruised, broken mouth.

Still those fingers impaled him as surely as a soldier on a sword. It was overpowering. He wilted back against the wall, letting his battered lips fall slack even as they were bitten, because he was only a courier, and he'd been a fool to run, and what if the lord made the service let him go - 

A knee wedged his legs apart. “They say couriers have long legs. What about your second tail, cub?”

That called a fresh round of hoots and crude comments from the hounds behind the lord. Csevet shut his eyes, trying to block the world away as the lord at last removed his fingers - but only to stick them instead down the front of his breeches, seizing Csevet's penis like a sword-hilt. “Soft little tail, soft little cub!” The lord tongued a long, urgent stripe up his neck and higher, sucking the last of the mess from his ear, while his hand dragged heavily back and forth.

Did he want him aroused? Would that help this pass more quickly? Csevet tried to summon images of desire, summer-soft hair and sweetly-shaped arms, but they turned to ash in his mind at each painful tug, each touch that sickened his stomach like a poison. When his shoulders were seized and he was spun, then shoved to his knees, he tried to pretend he was kneeling to pray to Salezheio, for she guarded all couriers, surely even through such horrors as these – but at the feel of a velvet-clad crotch pressed to his broken nose all hopes were dispelled.

“Open it with thy teeth, cub.” The lord gripped him, bruising, breaking-tight, by the ears.

And what else could he do with his teeth while he was here? – nothing, if he wanted to live, and he did, he did, he had fought the whole world to become a courier, higher than his family had ever dared reach before – Still with eyes jammed shut, he ran his battered mouth along the placket. There, a button, tasting of metal: he yanked and dragged at the surrounding fabric until it popped free. Then again. And again. His burning nose and mouth bumped and dragged against velvet, and the hard erection beyond it.

“Dach'osmer, may we?” This from a voice behind him, and he paid it no attention until - 

Someone grabbed his arms, and yanked them back and up, painfully wrenching at the shoulders. His eyes flew open from shock, but he could not move his head because of the grip on his ears, could only look at brown velvet, exposed white cotton underthings, the jutting urgency beyond.

“Pay attention to thy task, cub.” The lord's fingers twisted in his earrings, smashed him forward. His gasping open mouth pressed against fabric and, behind it, a pulsing shaft. Something wet ran down his nose: blood or tears, he did not know. Revulsion rolled in his belly. The only way was forward. He closed his eyes, then moved his tongue against the fabric, and a sigh and shiver went through the lord's long body.

Into his hands, limp at the end of his pinioned, wrenched arms, someone shoved another penis. His participation in that did not seem needed: the someone thrust into his loose fingers, and the motion made his head thrust at the lord's groin. With an exclamation, the lord loosed one of Csevet's ears just long enough to pull his penis free of his underwear, and with one more thrust was so deep in Csevet's mouth that he could not breathe. Perhaps he would faint. Perhaps he would die. Nothing held him up but the grip on his arms and ears. The penis went on and on, splitting his jaw wide, his throat open. Sparkles grew in the darkness behind his lids. Perhaps the goddess finally saw him, perhaps her light was coming for him … 

The penis was withdrawn. His body inhaled quite involuntarily, and then in a mess of blood and spit and choking his mouth was filled again. _Endure just this_ , he thought, _surely this is not worse than when the surgeon set thy leg_ – but though he had quickly learned lying in the courier's service, he had never yet managed to lie to himself. He wept, gagging and sobbing, and the lord fucked his face, and he could not escape, not by body, not by mind.

There was a groan behind him. Wetness spurted over his hands, and he knew what it was. Cringing, he flinched violently, only succeeding in wrenching his arms still further. _Why didst thou run, fool of an elf, it might have gone more gently on you_ – Now his arms were released, and he eddied sideways in a half-asphyxiated haze, the penis sliding from his mouth with a sucking sound. 

“You dared come before us, Dalera?” said the lord, far above Csevet's head, using his ears to press his face against the lord's thigh. “Kneel down. Don't close your breeches. Ardis, kill him.”

“Yes, lord!”

There was a scream, broken an instant later by a crunch and thud and gurgling. Hot wetness sprayed the back of Csevet's head and the air bloomed with the smell of blood. He shuddered, not quite understanding that he had not been the one to die, pressing dazedly into the leg before him.

“A pity you did not sever the spine neatly,” said the lord. “That is a great deal of blood. Cub, clean the body.” Csevet was hurled around, pushed down against something warm and wet and fleshy, _no, no,_ he thrashed with panic. “ _Clean it_ , we say!” A boot pressed against his head. 

His eyes flew open briefly. He closed them instantly, but not before his vision was branded with a sight of horror.

“No! No!” He kicked, flailed his arms, this was too much, this wasn't right, oh goddesses, he could taste blood and skin, his mouth was shoved into the wound and he could hear the gurgling of the great artery exsanguinating and was the man still alive _no no no_ and – Now he was free, and he rolled away across a gritty stone floor, but there came a great scream from the lord, roars from the hounds, and then feet began to pound at his belly and back and he curled up, baby-like, around himself. A puddle of blood cradled his cheek.

“Wilt pay for that, _cub_ ,” rasped the lord, and in a flash of despair Csevet realised that in his thrashing he had knocked the lord over.

He thought he had been terrified already.

The kicking stopped. Someone wrenched his breeches off. “I am so sorry, so sorry, please, no, please, so sorry.” Words trickled weakly out of his mouth, but his limbs had died of fear and he could not move. His legs were wrenched apart. That bigger body pressed over his like the weight of the tomb, and the penis still damp from his own mouth shoved into his backside, breaking body as wide as soul was already broken. Within him it rasped, fast and hard and deep, like a blacksmith's file. The lord's hands ripped at Csevet's hair: the lord's mouth bit his neck, his shoulders, his ears, over and over. And when the lord climaxed, pouring within him, he thought it was over.

“Ardis: use the cub as you will.”

One weight was replaced by another, the invasion began again, and Csevet began to cry into the flagstones, body shuddering. He could not endure longer, he could not, this pain was too much for the living. But it went on, it went on. The noise of flesh on flesh. The heavy grunts against his head. The forces bearing him down. The burning, ripping thrusts.

After that one, another.

Another.

And another.

Over and over he was filled, stretched, opened beyond bearing. Another, and another, and another. Until at last the hounds were sated, and then the lord came to him once more, stroking his thumb across Csevet's ripped ear. “Please. _Please_ ,” Csevet whispered. “I'll be good. I promise.”

“Well, since thou plead'st so sweetly - ” said the lord. A whip snapped. A thin line of agony bloomed down Csevet's spine, slicing open both shirt and the skin beneath. He was too weak to do more than tremble and cling to the floor, eyes too tight and exhausted to weep anymore.

“This for thy rebellion – this for every minute thou ran from us – this for every hound whom thou let violate thee - “

 _Snap. Snap. Snap._ Until his back burned like a bonfire, and then the lord sat down upon it, those velvet breeches rubbing deep into the wounds. He wrapped his fingers in Csevet's hair. “Pretty little cub,” he said. “Next time we meet, wilt not bite us, wilt thou?”

_No, lord._

“Wilt beg prettily for our cock, next time. For the cocks of our hounds, even for the cocks of the true dogs that sleep in our hearth.”

_Yes, lord._

“Wilt remember the place of a fox in the world. May run as fast as thy legs will take thee, but the hounds always catch their prey.”

_Always, lord._

Hands shoved an item up his passage – nothing living this time, but something scratchy and cool. “A farewell gift, cub.” Laughing, the lord rose, and the removal of his weight let Csevet list onto his side and buckle up, knees coming to his chest. 

“Hounds,” said the lord, “it seems we have a dead fox here. We should prepare his pelt for the tanners.”

Roars of laughter. Rustles, and the sound of belt buckles opening. Csevet wished he was dead. Let them rape his corpse. It would give them less trouble than a living body, and he would not be there ... But no hands touched him. Instead liquid began to splatter over his back, stinging the wounds there so sharply that his exhausted body found enough strength to cry again, dryly. The stink of hot urine for a moment overwhelmed the room's smell of drying blood.

After that they left. 

Their loud, merry voices retreated, faded, were replaced by the distant wuther of the storm. The deep chill of a stone fortress swept over him. 

He should move. He should seek help. The servants' hall. The warmth of a fire. He should seek his breeches.

Everyone knew this sometimes happened to couriers. He should not be so foolish, so weak. It was his own fault.

He did not quite believe they were gone.

Time slid past, thick as blood. After a while, he realised how cold he had become, particularly his exposed backside, and he never wanted it exposed again. It took several tries, but he finally uncurled his locked, trembling limbs, and opened his eyes for the first time in hours. A dirty, sparsely-furnished room met his gaze, lit only by a small window admitting the distant glow of light from some courtyard. A puddle of darkness beneath a chair looked like his breeches. He wobbled to his knees, and shuffled across to it. His face was a beating heart of pain, and his torso throbbed from the kickings, and his back felt like it had been laid across a grill. There was a thick, horrible wetness seeping down the insides of his thighs from between his buttocks. Both his penis and his legs hurt from being scraped heavily back and forth over the flagstones with the motions of his rapists. His fingernails were shredded from having clung to the floor. But he was alive still. That was good. That was meant to be good.

When he tried to put his breeches on, his hands shook so terribly he could barely manage the task. And when it came to pulling them over his hips, he realised there was still the farewell gift from the lord in his backside. He found it with trembling hands and pulled. 

Before he even brought it around to look, his hands told him what it was: a fox's tail, soaked with gore at one end.

He was sick, suddenly and violently, over it. He dropped the thing like a hot coal, and bent double, and heaved over and over again, until he felt turned inside out, but still not clean … 

*

…. “What do you think they would have done to you if they had caught you?” his master asked, and Csevet, lost in the dreamland between the truth of his memories and the lies he was spinning – the bronchine, after he'd managed to escape the fortress, had been real enough – was almost caught off guard. 

“We imagine,” he said, using every skill he had ever learned to shade his voice with the emotions he wanted, “that being beaten to death is the best we could have hoped for. And - ” Why did Maia Drazhar care? Why did he always care? That was not meant to be the point of this wondertale. He had meant to warn of the violence and danger of the Tethimada. “ - Serenity, we must tell you that no one would have cared,” he said. No one had. His supervisor had seen the marks, and, simply sighing, sent Csevet out on his next mission with a pot of ointment. It had taken over a year to stop jumping when someone approached him, longer to stop cringing from shame under the understanding sadness in the eyes of other couriers. “The Duke Tethimel got his message, and that, after all, is what matters.”

“According to _whom_?” said his master, sounding every inch the emperor, his expression so suddenly reminiscent of Varenechibel and yet his words entirely his own. It struck Csevet's heart. He felt his ears tremble, and swallowed. 

“Serenity,” he said, “it was many years ago. And we survived.” 

Distress flickered across the Emperor's face, and Csevet knew immediately that an apology was on its way. His master did not think of himself first. “Yes. We are sorry. We are … ”

A lucky interjection from Kiru let the conversation be turned to other subjects. And in time Csevet was able to leave the Tortoise Room. He had an appearance to maintain, just as much as his master, but just for a moment in an empty corridor he closed his eyes and leaned against a nearby wall. He had thought he had made peace with his memories. Why did they burn so freshly now?

The look in his master's eyes had made him dream of a world where those memories could never have been created.

Perhaps this was Salezheio's answer to his prayers, after all this time, her blessing to balance out his pain. This gift of a master.


End file.
